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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Newtown Connecticut: Reflections on Sorrow

Originally posted on December 17th on my PsychologyToday Psychiatrist at Large blog:On Thursday, April 19, 2007 following the Virginia Tech shooting on my Psychiatrist at Large blog I wrote a post titled "From Columbine to Virginia Tech".I wanted to believe that was the last time I would write about children killing and getting killed in this day and age in this country. Unfortunately it was not. I have no words to express the sadness I felt when I learned about the Connecticut tragedy.I cannot put myself in those Newtown families' shoes, as I feel like I could lose my mind. There is anger and disappointment, not directed at anyone specifically but rather at all of us – a society in which we somehow created a space and a state of mind where such tragedies are becoming a common place.A place, where in this time of sorrow, we seem to be choosing time and again to disrespect private mourning and instead give thumbs up and high audience ratings to media that pry most intrusively into people's sorrow with its pointed lenses, sharp cameras, and unstoppable journalists. A time when our main reaction to tragedy is voyeurism.Newtown now follows in the steps of a number of traumatized communities. As a small community facing such massive trauma, Newtown will struggle to recover. It’s hard enough to make sense of arbitrary chaos that hits out of the blue, to repair the broken trust and to heal the wounded hearts. Let's not make it any harder by further assaulting it with our microphones and bright lights. Let's allow Newtown its privacy, let it bury its dead and heal its bleeding hearts in peace and quiet.

In this time of sorrow, it is so much more disturbing to see that what I wrote five years ago is as true today as it was then. Time is supposed to not only heal, but teach. Hopefully, five years from now, this will only be a sad memory, and will no longer ring as true as today. What follows is 2007 text with changes indicated in parentheses. Here is a disturbing timeline of school killings in America: